Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Cutting the Gordian knot

King of the Spill has made a Gordian knot.
When I had a good look at it I saw that it looked complex because a lot of grass rakes were drawn on the board at the same time. If I would do that for the Queen scan then it would look complex in a similar way.
Once I realized that, I decided to keeps things simple.
My Knight scan consists now of a scan two moves deep, just like the other scans.
In a way it is similar to all the other rakes I'm working with (see diagram).


Allthough in practice it feels more like I'm scanning an umbrella shape than a rake.
Doing the Knight scan is much simpler in practice than I feared.

All this scanning with strange patterns is very unusual to my mind. I find it to be much more difficult on a screen than on a board.
The mind demonstrates a lot of resistance to this activity by feeling tired and even let me fall asleep, even while there is no physical reason for that. Especially the Queen scan is very vehement. I can only do sessions from about 20 minutes long (that's why I blog so much:).
Actually I interpret that as a good sign: my brain is undergoing some real changes.
The Bishop scan is now so familiar, that it doesn't cost me much energy anymore.
I trust that the same will happen when my brain gets used to the other patterns.

Bishop scan was 30 seconds, now 5 seconds.
Rook scan was 30 seconds, now 7 seconds.
Queenscan was 45 seconds, now 25 seconds.
Knightscan, was 30 seconds, now 20 seconds.
Target scan, not started yet.

7 comments:

  1. Man, your images keep getting better. Thanks!

    GK

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  2. I actually used scanning a few times successfully while solving my problems.

    Also - how are you keeping track of the time you take to do a scan, are you using a stopwatch?

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  3. Java,
    no, I let the computer play against itself with the level set at 1 move every 25 seconds (for the Queen scan).
    The first moves I use only a few seconds because the Queens are still blocked by their own pieces. So the level of the computer is the maximum time I am allowed to use. When I feel confident that I can do the scan every time in time, with seconds remaining, I diminish the amount of time the computer is allowed to think.

    So it's a rather subjective way to determin the time, but since Dr. Elo is my objective judge that's no problem.

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  4. I think this could work out well if you can get them done fast enough and find a good way to use it in-game.


    Ahmad

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  5. I like the umbrella analogy.

    btw - I think you meant "Doing the Knight scan is much simpler in practice than I feared."

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